Arabidopsis Research Roundup: January 17th

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Todays Arabidopsis Research Roundup includes some excellent examples of UK labs engaged in collaborative work with researchers from around the globe. However first up is a study solely from the John Innes Centre, led by Vinod Kumar, that investigates the role of PIF4 during the thermosensory response. Secondly David Evans (Oxford Brookes University) is a co-author on a French-led study that has looked into the role of LINC complexes during interphase heterochromatin patterning. Thirdly is the description of the new PhenoTiki imaging tool that has come from the lab of Sotirios Tsaftaris in Edinburgh. Work from Paul Dupree (University of Cambridge) features in the ARR for the second consecutive week, this time with a study looking at the sugar composition of seed mucilage. The penultimate study is from the lab of Renier van der Hoorn (Oxford University) who investigates the role of Cys proteases during senescence and finally is a study from Seth Davis (University of York) that looks at the link between the circadian clock and the plants energy sensing mechanisms.

Open Access
Vinod Kumar (John Innes Centre) leads this study that looks at the role of the PHYTOCHROME INTERACTING FACTOR 4 (PIF4) transcription factor during the thermosensory response and its effect on plant architecture. They looked at the natural variation of PIF4, demonstrating the role of different varients on the balance between growth and immunity to pathogens. Pertubing PIF4-mediated effects result in temperature-resilient disease resistance. This study links with a paper highlighted in last weeks ARR from Kerry Franklin and co-authors that presented the role of UVR8 on the control of PIF4 heat responsive effects. These studies further confirm the important role of PIF4 in plant development in response to environmental change and biotic challenges.

Vinod discusses this paper and a related manuscript from next weeks ARR. Also available on the GARNet YouTube channel.

This study is led by Christophe Tatout from Clermond-Ferrand and includes David Evans and Axel Poulet (Oxford Brookes University) as co-authors. The paper focuses on the role of the nuclear envelope-localised LInker of Nucleoskeleton and Cytoskeleton (LINC) complex on nuclear morphology and interphase chromatin localisation. This work is underpinned by the use of novel 3D imaging tools to define where in the nucleus the chromatin is localised in both wildtype and linc mutant plants. This allows the authors to show that the LINC complex is necessary for proper heterchromatin organisation at the nuclear periphery, which might have broad implications for gene expression and transcriptional silencing.

Open Access
This manuscript describes the PhenoTiki tool that is designed for the automated phenotyping of Arabidopsis rosettes, work which is led by Sofortios Tsaftaris (University of Edinburgh). PhenoTiki describes both the imaging software and also cheap-to-use off-the-shelf hardware that allows for facile imaging at reduced costs. The proof-of-concept study in the paper shows a comprehensive analysis from a range of parameters in 24 Arabidopsis rosettes from different genotypes. This data is compared favourably to more expensive methods of automated phenotyping so the authors hope PhenoTiki can be adopted as a low-cost method for image analysis. Full details can be found at http://phenotiki.com.

Open Access
Paul Dupree (University of Cambridge) is part of this global collaboration with colleagues from Australia, USA and Chile. The study investigates the intracellular movement of the plant cell polysaccharide pre-cursor UDP-glucuronic acid (UDP-GlcA). To identify genes involved in this process they cleverly screened mutants for alteration in seed mucilage, which has high level of other polysaccharides. This strategy identified UUAT1, which is a golgi-localised transporter of UDP-GlcA and UDP-galacturonic acid (UDP-GalA). Uuat1 mutants have altered sugar composition in both the seed coat mucilage and in other plant organs. These changes were also associated with an increase, by a currently unknown mechanism, of homogalacturonan methylation. Overall the authors show that UUAT1 is important for the correct distribution of cell wall polysaccahrides throughout growing embryo and will surely play important developmental roles in the function of the cell wall.

In this paper Renier van der Hoorn (University of Oxford) interacts with US, German and Australian colleagues to use the activity-based protein profiling (ABPP) technique to assess the activity of active enzymes during senescence. They show that in Arabidopsis leaves the expression of several Papain-like Cys Proteases (PLCPs) is elevated but the activity of many Vacuolar Processing Enzymes (VPEs) is decreased, even though their transcript level increases. The amount of senescence was assessed in plants with mutations in different members of these protease families and surprisingly did not find any difference when compared to wildtype plants. One exception was in plants containing a mutation in the AALP PLCP which showed a significant, albeit slight, descrease in the rate of senescence.

Seth Davies (University of York) leads this study that includes German, Mexican and Chinese collaborators and looks at the link between the circadian clock and plant metabolism. The energy sensing Snf1 (sucrose non-fermenting 1)-related kinase 1 (SnRK1) complex contains the catalytic AKIN10 protein, which plays an important role in clock function by controlling expression of the key evening element GIGANTEA (GI). This AKIN10 effect requires the clock regulator TIME FOR COFFEE (TIC) demonstrating an important role for the plants energy sensing mechanisms, via the AKIN10, in conditional control of clock gene expression.

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